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Pet Shop Boys - Introspective

Year of Release: 1988
Genre: Pop
Country: UK


So I had a few requests for an 80s album this month instead of my usual go to period of the 90s. I've been trawling through my album collection and have realised that, whilst the 80s is a GREAT decade for singles imo, it was more of a struggle than I'd anticipated to find an album that I truly loved. I feel a little guilty for going for an obvious pick such as Pet Shop Boys but hopefully I've chosen an album that gets overlooked a little in favour of their earlier 80s work. I'll also get this out there from the off so as to give the purists some time to get over the shock but I'm also including this album as a playlist that isn't actually the one released... yep, collective chart forum gasps!

Now before you get too drawn in by my confession, I am including all of the album so it is most definitely here but have also included a selection of the b-sides and demos from the time to boost it up to 10 tracks. All of the things I've chosen are from the expanded 'Further Listening' version of the album that the PSBs curated rather lovingly for all of their albums. In particular they were working very closely with Liza Minelli and Dusty Springfield at the time and so I've included a couple of songs they wrote for them. Hopefully this expands the album a bit whilst sticking to a true representation of the material they were working on at the time.

Earlier in the decade they had released a remix album called Disco, an album that contained the singles from their debut album in extended form plus Paninaro and In The Night to complete the set. I've always thought that album was the template for this release as it is a rare studio album that was most definitely aimed at the club market, all of the tracks on it are in their extended form whilst the normal length versions were retained exclusively for the singles... of which their were four... or possibly three and a half as Always On My Mind wasn't really from the same era.



I'm sure everyone knows Always On My Mind, albeit it features on this album in a suitably different format from the version that made UK #1 for Christmas 1987. Next up was Domino Dancing, a #7 hit and the first new track to be released. It was quite a departure for them at the time, bringing Latin styling to their brand of flamboyant pop - this was never a huge favourite of mine but it has really grown on me over the years and I think it's a great and distinctive track in their catalogue now. Next up was Left To My Own Devices, the opening track from the album and quite possibly my favourite PSB single ever. It's just such a PSB song with the strings and disco stylings but it's especially PSB in its lyrics... I mean "I was faced with a choice at a difficult age, would I write a book? Or should I take to the stage? But in the back of my head I heard distant feet, Che Guevara and De'bussy to a disco beat" surely has to be a contender for their best lyric ever and even the title of the single is such a wonderfully British turn of phrase. The aforementioned strategy of releasing 7" versions as singles made for good chart success, this made #4 and the final single made #5. That final single was It's Alright, a cover of the classic Sterling Void house anthem which they recorded to show their love of club music and the US house music scene that was beginning to take hold in the 80s. I must say that I think it's a good cover, it stays faithful to the original whilst making it sound like a song that you would believe was originally theirs.

The single versions of the four main songs:






The track listing I've gone for is as follows:

01 Left to My Own Devices
02 I Want a Dog
03 Domino Dancing
04 I'm Not Scared
05 Nothing Has Been Proved
06 Always On My Mind / In My House
07 Losing My Mind
08 I Get Excited (You Get Excited Too)
09 It's Alright
10 Your Funny Uncle

I've bolded the ones that are on the normal single disc album and they're in the same order so you can listen to those if you would prefer to be a purist. With my additions, there was a total of five songs here that were hits for someone else, aside from the aforementioned singles from Elvis Presley and Sterling Void, the three others were songs that PSBs wrote that were hits for others. Liza Minelli took Losing My Mind into the UK top 10 and Dusty Springfield took Nothing Has Been Proved into the top 20. The final one was not too long after the album release in the form of I'm Not Scared by Eighth Wonder, the band that Patsy Kensit fronted and took to the UK top 10 as well. So, one way or another, there's a lot of success from this era. The album was a commercial success too, debuting at peaking at #2 in October 1988 (so many of their albums made #2!) and it spent its first 20 weeks inside the top 40 so had quite a sustained chart run. It was their final album to manage such a feat.

The versions by other acts of the tracks:








And that's it until we do the album listen later this week - Rollo, I'll do you a youtube video of the album in this format so it's easy to pull together. Hope you enjoy the selection, here's the spotify playlist if you fancy having a listen right now